Tonight in Istanbul, police made good on Erdogan’s “final warning” this week and stormed Gezi Park, clearing out all demonstrators with more tear gas, water canons, and rubber bullets. Then came the demolition:

Bulldozers moved in afterward, scooping up debris as crews of workmen in hard hats and fluorescent yellow vests tore down the tents. Protesters put up little physical resistance, even as plain-clothes police shoved many of them to drive them from the park. White smoke billowed skyward as a phalanx of riot police marched inside the park on Saturday. They tore down protesters’ banners, toppled a communal food stall, and sprayed tear gas over the tents and urging those inside to get out.

The civilians under fire fled to nearby cafes and hotels to rest and tend to each other’s injuries. Before long, police entered the Divan Hotel and filled the lobby with tear gas (seen in the above video):

[P]olice stormed the hotel beating protesters, while a later assault left the lobby of the luxury hotel thick with gas. The Observer saw two elderly women who had passed out, being carried out on stretchers to an ambulance.

Protestors in Istanbul’s Gezi Park have appropriated a song from the Le Mis soundtrack:

Meanwhile, the prime minister issued a “final warning” to the protestors earlier today. Ben Judah argues that Erdogan “doesn’t get it because he is still fighting his last battle – the secretive civil war within the Turkish elite”:

[J]ust as Erdogan seemed to have finally defeated the “Deep State,” these protestors have appeared across Turkey attacking his leadership and calling for his removal. He must have felt blind-sided by the spontaneous demonstrations because the last time there were similar mass protests in Turkey, back in 2007, they were organized by the military in alliance with the opposition Republican People’s Party. Those protests brought hundreds of thousands out onto the streets in an effort to block Erdogan from winning the election. Gigantic crowds in Ankara and Izmir numbered more than 350,000 Turkish flag-waving secularists.

Erdogan smells conspiracy because, until 2011, Turkish politics has been nothing but conspiracy.

[Erdogan] is quite clearly trying to mobilize his supporters by acting as if his opponents are attempting to carry out a civilian coup, and by repeatedly refusing to stand down and instead upping the ante with tear gas, truncheons, water cannons, and endless tone deaf insults, he is beginning to tear the country apart. There are numerous cleavages in Turkish society that run along fault lines of religious-secular, rural-urban, conservative-liberal, rich-poor, and Sunni-Alevi-Kurdish, to name just a few. Some of these have been more under wraps than others, but this brings them all to the surface in a way that will be difficult to undo.

This morning (NYT), one day after Erdogan scheduled a meeting with the demonstrators, riot police rushed into Taksim Square and subdued the lingering protestors with tear gas and water canons. By all accounts so far, police were provoked by a few people throwing rocks and molotov cocktails:

Amid Tuesday’s clashes, Erdogan made it more than clear that he had come to the end of his tolerance. “To those who … are at Taksim and elsewhere taking part in the demonstrations with sincere feelings: I call on you to leave those places and to end these incidents and I send you my love. But for those who want to continue with the incidents I say: ‘It’s over.’ As of now we have no tolerance for them,” Erdogan said, speaking in the capital, Ankara.

Can Oz, “the owner of the biggest literary publishing house in the country,” was there and fled the scene:

Some say the protesters’ firebomb attack was staged, and while I don’t have certain proof that this was the case, it wouldn’t surprise me: over the past few days I have witnessed so many lies from the police and government that I don’t think I can ever trust them again.

I have spent days with the protesters – withstanding another gas attack, cheering, singing chants and sharing food in the park – and I haven’t encountered any signs of weapons or violence on their behalf. These people made me feel like I’m living a dream.

The purpose of my visit to Taksim Square was to listen to the press conference the Taksim Solidarity movement had prepared; and I was confident that I could trust the chief of police and Istanbul mayor’s assurance that the park would not be attacked. Then, right before the press conference was about to start, gas rained down over our heads once again. It was a moment of crushing disappointment. Coughing, wiping tears out of my eyes, practically blind, I realised that our government would never understand the meaning of the passive resistance that Martin Luther King Jr and Mahatma Gandhi were famous for. That’s when I ran out of the park.

At this point it seems the government is more concerned with economic blowback than the unrest itself. The Turkish stock market has taken a dive while the lira “has dropped to an 18-month low”:

Citing the “excessive volatility” caused by “the international and domestic developments during the last month,” the Turkish Central Bank announced today that it would take steps to stabilize the lira. The announcement triggered a rebound for the currency, but it came as police unexpectedly reentered Taksim Square, igniting clashes with demonstrators.

The Turkish government’s inability so far to bring the protests to a peaceful end is likely to have more far-reaching impacts on the economy than new bank policies. Stability has long been one of Turkey’s most attractive features to investors. Without it, the nation’s economy could face growing challenges. These economic shortfalls may also erode support for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP).

It is tough to see which side is going to give here. Erdoğan does not want to back down, but my instincts tell me that as he is reminded of just how much his popularity depends on the economy and as he faces the prospect of losing the bid for the 2020 Turkish Olympics, he will try to come up with some sort of solution to end the chaos in the streets without having to go so far as to issue a formal full-blown apology. The fact that there is no opposition party poised to take advantage of the situation makes backing down slightly easier for him to do, and even Erdoğan understands just how crucial it is for his and his party’s longterm political future to make sure the Turkish economy keeps humming along.

(Photo: A protestor wearing a gas mask walks in front of a burning car on Taksim square on June 11, 2013. Turkish police fired massive volleys of tear gas and jets of water to disperse thousands of anti-government demonstrators in Istanbul’s Taksim Square on June 11, after earlier apparently retreating. The gas sent the crowd scrambling, raising tensions on a 12th day of violence after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned he had ‘no more tolerance’ for the mass demonstrations. By Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images)

Thousands of demonstrators attend the demonstration in Taksim Square on the ninth day of the nationwide protests on June 8, 2013 in Istanbul, Turkey. Istanbul has seen protests rage on for more than a week, with two protesters and one police officer killed. Initially a protest over the fate of Taksim Gezi Park it has broadened into anger over what has been seen as a heavy-handed response of the police and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government’s increasingly authoritarian agenda. By Lam Yik Fei/Getty Images.

[Tuesday] night, police raided 38 homes where citizens who had tweeted messages sympathetic to the protests lived—16 were arrested.

Many of them are apparently teenagers. The local police apparently honed in on tweets they deemed to be propagandic, and traced them back to protesters’ IP addresses at home. Their purported crime? Using social media to “instigate public hatred and animosity.” In reality, that means tweeting out supportive words or encouraging fellow citizens to join upcoming demonstrations. …

This is the paranoid behavior of an autocratic regime; though it is unfortunately unsurprising, given the rampant police brutality that has wracked the nation over the last few days. It also demonstrates a terribly poor understanding of how social media works, as did Erdogan’s now-infamous ‘menace to society’ comment. The move is likely only to further incense protesters, generate more sympathy for them, and inspire the tech-savvy to block their IPs. Meanwhile, a social media post left by one of the protesters killed in action has helped transform him into a hero to the movement.

Mustafa Akyol and HA Hellyer ponder the way forward for the Turkish government, noting a few encouraging signs:

The events of the past few days do not mean Erdogan has to resign – but it does suggest he ought to try to be a force for reconciliation. A good step was taken on Tuesday, when Bulent Arinc, Erdogan’s deputy, gave a press conference in which he promised police restraint, dialogue with the opposition, and “self-criticism” within the cabinet. Erdogan will do a great service, to himself and his country, if he uses similarly calming language on return from north Africa. His visit to that region ought to remind him that the best governments listen seriously to the demands of all citizens, not just those who voted them in. Erdogan’s accomplishments are so significant that the alternative route – of further confrontation and crisis – would be a great pity.

Erdogan may believe that he can outlast the protesters, and he may be right, particularly if the protesters succumb to the temptations of violence and vandalism. So far, they have been reasonably constrained. But the Robocops are exhausted—photos are circulating of them falling asleep on the street—and if there is one thing a prime minister best known for “taming the military” can’t do, it is to call in the army to settle things down. If the protests keep escalating and the crackdown intensifies, it’s hard to see how this can end well. Best case: the protests will spook the prime minister and give him a much-needed dose of humility. Worst case: The protests will spook the prime minister and leave him even more paranoid and vengeful.

[L]ike a rubber band after several years of liberal opening, the [ruling] AKP [party] has snapped back to what has long been the status quo of strongman autocracy, authoritarianism, patriarchy, and intolerance. These are characteristics that polls show are reflected by the population and characterize the still highly valued traditional family structure. But even an authoritarian father is expected to keep the welfare of his children foremost in mind. And that is where Erdogan has crossed the line. He dismissed the tens of thousands of citizens in the streets initially as purveyors of terror instigated by outsiders, then as “marginals,” as alcoholics, and finally, in perhaps the most revealing statement, as people who have an ideological gripe and who don’t like him personally.

It is the grandiosity of power and the increasingly punitive state that has pushed people onto the streets and keeps them hanging from the windows of their homes every day, bangingpots into the night. Even the revered father of the traditional family is expected to care about all this. But Prime Minister Erdogan, after insulting the protesters and refusing to acknowledge that there was any problem whatsoever, instead left for Morocco to attend a trade meeting.

A protestor wears a mask at the Gezi Park in Taksim Square on June 4, 2013 in Istanbul, Turkey. The protests began initially over the fate of Taksim Gezi Park, one of the last significant green spaces in the center of the city. The heavy-handed viewed response of the police, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government’s increasingly authoritarian agenda has broadened the rage of the clashes. By Uriel Sinai/Getty Images.